Wednesday, 30 December 2015

Decision

(tea-time of the gods, part 3)

* * *

Topgod and
Fate sit side by side on rocks at the top of a pointy mountain, a place chosen
for its panoramic view of an absence of humans, for although the cries and
ringing hammer-blows of the climbers working their way up the rocks form a
melodious reminder of the human presence, few come to the actual summit; if any
do, they tend to shy off, for they feel the presence of the supernatural even
though they are unable to see it.

Fate has
just relayed to Topgod the shocking request of Godlet Gamma that he should
become a human, to share the human experience, especially the knowledge of his
own mortality; and his even more insane motive – a wish to undo some of the
harm he has wrought during his time as overseer of Terra

.

Somewhere below,
Godlet Gamma himself is reclining halfway up Easy Ridge, from which he can
watch the action on Impossible Wall, clearly no longer impossible for there are
two hard men hammering in pitons, slowly ascending what looks to be a totally
smooth section of vertical rock; over to their right two teenagers are
following a faintly worried geography teacher up a rather less smooth and
vertical section, amid a tangled mess of rope; the geographer (whom his
parents, the Doolittles, had twenty-six years previously named Will, to the later
sniggers of his pupils) is right to be worried, for his pupils are far more
interested in a riveting piece of information about deviant sexual practices recently
revealed to them than in staying alive. Their merry voices float across: “and
he shoves this light-bulb so far up his mumble
mumble snigger…”

The godlet longs
to join them, for he is entranced by the sheer music of it all: the rhythmic
ringing of the hammers, the ostinato of the mumble-snigger, the occasional
tenor call of Mr Doolittle “For-god-sake
pay at-TEN-tion, Godfrey” are simultaneously a pleasure to the hearing and an
apparent call to his very own self: they cannot possibly know that he is there,
but it is as if they somehow feel his
presence, as if he is a kind of torch illuminating the murk of their …

But these
musings are cut short by a summons from above, and Godlet Gamma swiftly rises
to the summit, suddenly aware that perhaps his future has now been decided.

Fate has
brought oatcakes and manchego and a bottle of Glenmorangie, and offers Gamma
refreshment. “I couldn’t find any of that frog you brought last time, but this
is nearly as good, and easier to pronounce.”

“Or” chips
in Topgod “you might want to stick to just nectar and ambrosia and keep a clear
head till you’ve decided.”

Godlet Gamma
is struck immediately by the change in Topgod’s speech-patterns: he has given
up capitals and “thou”. What can this mean? a significant change in his thinking?
Is there hope?

And then
another thing strikes him: “till you’ve
decided” is what Topgod said. So it is to be his, Gamma’s, decision. Yes! He’ll
be human, he’ll be mortal, he’ll have an experience no other entity has ever
known! He will be Unique.

But they are
gazing at him with – could it be pity?
surely not?

“So, Gamma, I
believe you want to be human? To experience death and fear? This is not just
some obscure godlet joke?” Topgod sniffed the Glenmorangie fumes with a little
grunt of pleasure. “Remind me of your reasons, leaving out the bit about
undoing harm – you know fine that harm can’t be undone – let’s have the real
reason.”

Gamma is
taken aback. He had hoped that undoing harm would cut some ice, win approval
for his project. Surely it is at least arguable (and shows him in a good
light)?

“But for
example I could organise a disease that would wipe out, say, 90% of humans, and
the overpopulation problem would go away.”

Topgod sighs
and tries to remain patient. “You did that a while back, with the help of our
good friend Rat, and how well did that work, long-term? You could try it again.
there’s no need to be mortal to do that. Come on, cut out the faff, tell us
what you really want.”

“Um …” Gamma
searches for the words that will convey his longing. “You see, I’ve watched and
listened, maybe more than I was supposed to.” Pause.

Glug, crunch, mmm was all the comment he heard.

“And I see
how nasty their lives are a lot of the time, and what a lot of suffering they
have to put up with, but then I see that there are times when they experience
pleasure and satisfaction that seems to go way beyond anything that I’ve ever
felt – like these guys here fumbling about on this little piece of rock, see
how hard they have to work to do something that a goat or cat or beetle would
have no trouble with, if it wanted to, but look what enjoyment they get from
doing this totally useless thing.” He pauses to collect his thoughts.

“And then,”
he goes on, hesitatingly, sensing neither approval nor dissent from his
listeners (are they actually listening?),
“then there is the music. Ah, the music, I can’t get it out of my head, I need
more. Just the other day, deedle-deedle-pom-pom,
deedle-deedle-pompitty, magnificent, makes me want to dance!” He does a
little dance and croaks out a little song to illustrate the splendour of the
human achievement.

Down there
on Impossible Wall Godfrey asks Mr Doolittle “Hey, Doolittle, that croaking
noise, is that you (snigger)?” and Mr
Doolittle replies, with well-concealed hatred in his heart, “Oh, that’s just the
raven, it has a nest in the next gully to the west, it’s always floating about
here, watching.”

Fate and
Topgod look at each other, questions in their eyes. Fate says, “So is that it,
Gamma, pleasure, song, dance – is that the lot?”

“Deedle-deedle-pompitty – sorry! No, one
other thing. I feel that a lot of the pleasure and music is because they know
that one day they won’t be alive any longer. These guys here, for instance,
they could fall off any minute and be killed, there’s something there that I
want, no, I need to feel. So I need to be mortal.”

Gamma thinks
he’s probably just messed up, they won’t understand, how can they? a while
back, he wouldn’t have had any idea … until he’d heard de-de-de-DUM … but Topgod is standing up Usually that means he’s decided.

“Thank you
for a most interesting explanation, Gamma,” begins Topgod, approval in his stance
(on one leg, scratching his ear, good sign). “Fate and I have discussed it
thoroughly.”

And terribly quickly! thinks Gamma, and wonders if they’ve
even listened … but of course Time is different for entities of that grade.

“And we
think it best to give you a choice.”

Ah, success! deedle-deedle …

“Becoming
mortal yourself is unfortunately not an option at present,” awww! “because we are not made of stuff,
and can’t be transferred across to things made of stuff, at least not yet;
there may come a time when it can be done, there are entities working on it, so
don’t lose hope.” ahhh!

“Here’s what
we can offer: either you can live here with the humans permanently, but you
will remain invisible to them, and you will have no power to alter things, no
power at all. And of course you cannot die, but the day may come when transfer
to being mortal becomes possible, and you would be first on the list.”

A pause,
while Gamma digests this idea. Down below, Godfrey is getting bored, he has run
out of sexual-deviance stories and is thirsty, for the day is warm. “Eh, Doolittle,
you got any Irn-Bru?” “No, it’s down in the car.” “Fuxek, what good is it
there?” Not for the first time Will Doolittle reflects how much he would like
to clip Godfrey round the earhole and how swiftly he would be out of a job …
but at least they are near the top.

“Or you
could do another job,” continues Topgod, “while you wait for the transfer technology
to become workable. There’s a planet in Alpha Centauri where life forms have
emerged that are beginning to need overseeing. And we feel that with your intense
experience on Terra, you are exactly the right entity to do this. A timely forward
push for them, a new opportunity for you to use your skills. What do you think?”

Will Doolittle
brings Godfrey and Jeremy to the top, unties himself from the rope and says, “We
need to go to the summit, we want to tick it off in our Munro list.”

“Nah,” says
Godfrey “fuk the summit, we’ll wait here.” “Right, sort out the rope, back in a
minute,” and off strides Doolittle, sped on a wave of relief. “Hey, Jezzer, got
any fags on ya?” “Aye, Gozzer, mebbe somewhere,” Jeremy pats his pockets.

Gamma is
torn between despair and hope: on the one hand … on the other … so many
questions. “How much time can I have to think about it?”

“All the
time you want, no hurry,“ says Fate, but I think we should go elsewhere now,
for I see some humans are finished their climb, and one of them is heading this
way. Pack the food and drink away, would you, Gamma?”

Will Doolittle
is racing across the ground, so glad to be away from Godfrey and Jeremy that he
notices nothing until he bumps into … something, SOME THING, nothing he can see or touch, but a huge energy and power
that fills him with a terror that unhinges his brain and brings the taste of
ash to his mouth; he turns and runs, blindly, seeing nothing … straight over
the edge and down into the gully where the raven wheels and croaks.

“Oh dear, I
wonder why he was going so fast, what a pity, I must write it up”, says Fate,
as they shimmer off on their huge leathery wings.

“That was
our fault, I feel guilty, what a pity,” moans Godlet Gamma.

“Nobody’s
fault. Stuff happens,” says Topgod. “Come on, Gamma, find us some more of that
great cheese …”

“Fuxek,”
Godfrey mutters through a cloud of fragrant smoke, “what got into old Doolittle?
What’re we supposed to do now?”

“Climb down,
I suppose, down’s got to be easier than up, and we’re roped together, we’ll be
fine. The Irn-Bru’s down there in the car. C’mon, Gozzer, you go first, I’ll
hold the rope.” On the way up he hadn’t noticed the bit about getting tied on
to something that wouldn’t give way.

Godfrey, whose
athletic dexterity far outshines his verbal ability, is nearly at the end of
the rope before one foot slides off a little round knob at the moment when he is
feeling around for something to hold on to. Quite gracefully, he peels off, and
Jeremy, who is standing at the edge trying to see down, and who has not tied
himself to anything, is plucked over the edge.

Down they
whirr, and a faint Fuxek! floats up
the gully mingling musically with the raven’s croak.

The hard men
barely need discussion: swiftly they decide that this is not a day for doing
difficult when easy is available, swiftly they traverse to the right where a
series of big safe holds takes them to the top, where they share a calming fag.

Drifting
away, Fate asks Topgod, very quietly, “This life form on the Alpha Centauri
planet, what sort of a thing is it?”

“Oh, it’s
like a huge sea-slug. Most fascinating, lots of varieties, great colours. No
music as yet, but probably Gamma’ll sort something out before long.”

Faintly from
far, far off, comes a croaking that could be the call of another raven but is
in fact the song of Godlet Gamma in victory mode: deedle-deedle-pom-pom, deedle-deedle-pompitty, de-de-de-DUM! DUM! DUM!

Saturday, 26 December 2015

Consultation

(teatime of the gods, part 2)

* * *

“Why consult
me?” asked Godlet Gamma, a touch
peevishly, “I did a baddish Job and was taken off the Case. It was handed over
to thee, I’m not allowed to intervene,
I expect that includes consult?” and he reached for the consolation of the Laphroaig
which he happened to have brought with him.

“Aye, right”
said Fate, who believed that two affirmatives made a negative – indeed that two
of anything made its opposite: for instance, two wrongs made a right, two
adults made an infant, etcetera. “Come on, stop that snivelling, grow up and
smell the reality. What’s in that bottle? Lap-phrow-ayg? How do you say it,
what is it, anyway?”

“Er, it’s a Kind of Nectar, La-froig, I think. Wouldst thou like to try it? I like the smoky Flavour, and the After-burn.”

Some time
passed in meditative sipping and noises of appreciation. Then Godlet Gamma
suddenly remembered that he was consulting. Or being consulted. Or something,
something to do with the Terra job, and reality …

“Um? What
reality? … Reality?”

“Ach, forget
that capital stuff, we don’t need it between just the two of us. And forget
that thou/thee stuff as well, who needs it? The old guy, Topgod, has to cover his ass in case of
misunderstanding, but we understand each other fine.”

It took
Gamma some time to grasp this startling idea. “I suppose so,” he finally
replied. “Well, but what is there to consult about? You are Fate. Surely you
decide what happens next, just you? All other inputs are out. Er, so to speak.”

“No, no,
laddie, that’s not the reality, that’s the myth. See, I don’t decide anything.
Stuff happens, and I just record it. Er this frog nectar is great stuff, could
I …?”

“LaFROIG. Yes,
of course, help yourself, plenty more where that came from. But who makes the
decisions, then? It must be someone’s job. I suppose Topgod …”

“No, no,
he’s just the administrator. See, no-one decides. Stuff just happens, like I
said.”

“And that’s
all you do, record it? That’s not really a top job, is it? I mean, you have to
be totally reliable, of course, that’s important, but it’s not cutting-edge, not
like making decisions, like I was doing before he took me off the job.”

“Ah well,
recording is only a bit of what I have to do. The really fascinating bit is,
once I’ve got What happened and Who did it and Where and When, I have to work
out How and Why the stuff happened. That’s a lot harder, verging on the
impossible sometimes.”

“So when you
hear people saying It was Fated …?”

“It’s
rubbish. See, I work out how and why the stuff happened retrospectively, and
then folk can see that Z happened because Y had happened and Y happened because
X had happened, and so on, back to the beginning of time. And because I’ve
shown them this logical trail, they think I must have been in charge of it. And
actually no-one was in charge: the stuff happened just because that’s the way
things work. You could predict the future if you knew enough, but none of us
knows enough.”

“Not even
Topgod?”

“Mm. I’m not
sure about that, but I suspect even Topgod doesn’t know absolutely everything.
I’ve seen him looking surprised.”

“Oh? like
when?”

“For
instance, on Terra, when the human invented the bicycle – it took such a time
after the wheel that he didn’t think it was going to join two wheels and add pedals
… and I think the aeroplane was a bit of a surprise as well, not because of
lack of inventiveness, more because it wasn’t needed, when there was bicycle
and boat, and of course train – he really loved the train ... Och this is a
really really great nectar, has he tasted it? I bet that surprised him.“

(When they
speak about Topgod, they aren’t actually saying “he”, of course: none of them
are he or she or it but something else, like “being” or “entity”, but there isn’t
an appropriate pronoun in any human language, so we rolled the dice to decide
what to use, and it decided on “he”. Was that really a random decision? Does
randomness really exist? You may well ask. But back to Fate and Gamma …)

After a
considerable pause, to savour the after-burn of the great new nectar, Gamma
brought himself back, with an effort, to the matter in hand. Whatever that was.
He felt not quite in precision-think mode.

“He hasn’t
had any yet, I’m keeping it to soften him up about what I’d like to do next, something
I really want to do, but he’ll probably say it can’t be done.”

“Most things
can be done,” said Fate, “so long as it isn’t against a law of nature, you
couldn’t cancel Gravity, for instance. What are you wanting to do? By the way,
I have a rather fine store of biscuits and cheese over in that cupboard, maybe
there’d be something that would go with this frog, would you have a rummage and
see what you can find?”

After a bit
of a rummage Gamma returned bearing a packet of oatcakes and a cheese platter
sporting brie, stilton, manchego, camembert and wensleydale. They tucked in
wordlessly for a while, before Gamma summoned up his nerve and outlined his
near-unthinkable proposal, hesitantly at first.

“What I’d like
to do, it’s maybe impossible, but what I really really want to do, is be a human for a while. For ages I’ve watched them
finding ways to do things that seemed impossible, living in desert or snow-and-ice,
inventing different languages, sailing, flying, climbing to a height where they
can’t breathe; they take huge risks, and they’re so brave, even when they’re
frightened a lot of the time. I’ve watched this and I want to know what it feels
like to do it, to do something that could destroy me, make me not exist, it’s
beyond imagining. I want to know what being mortal feelsh like. Hic! feelslike.”
He hesitated, watching to see if Fate was shocked, but Fate was concentrating
on a rather crumbly oatcake loaded with camembert, so he seized the wensleydale and went on.

“I made mishtakesh,
and now Terra is a messh. If I had really undershtood what it wash like to be a
human, I might of avoided the mishtakes. Hic! And I might be able to put shome
of it right.”

A silence
fell, broken only by the sound of intermittent munch and glug, and presently by
shriek and hiss as word got round the local seagulls that a free lunch was
developing.

Presently a
small, tentative clearing of the throat came through the mix of crumb, laphroaig
and wensleydale. “Er, ish it too shilly to even think about, hic!?”

“No, no-no-no-no. I’m thinking what an admirable and well-meaning young thing
you are. And of course wondering where to get a whole crate of this frog which
is making thinking so painless as to be easy and sharp – very, very sharp and
to the point, ha-hah,” and Fate swayed, ever so slightly.

“Thing ish,”
he went on, “thing is, how to do it. “We can turn you into a human, no big
problem, but you couldn’t shurvive, survive a week, you don’t know how to do
anything, you don’t undershtand money, you couldn’t pick up a fish’n’chipsh and
take it home and watch telly and have a beer and a chat, you couldn’t be
ordinary, not shtraight off, you’d need
practish, practice …”

^Oh. Yesh. I
shee, see the problem. But…” (pause, munch, pause, glug) “… but hic! shposhe,
shuppose I wash born human and learnt
bit by bit, like what a baby doesh? Baby doeshn’t need money for fish’n’chipsh …
“ and with this brilliant suggestion, Godlet Gamma keeled over quite slowly and
lay among the oatcake crumbs and bits of wensleydale, mumbling blurrily de-de-de-DUM, de-de-de-DUM. de-de-de- …

Fate rested
his head on his upper legs for a while. Then with an effort he picked up Godlet
Gamma in his beak, spread his great leathery wings and floated off. Gamma’s de-de-de-DUM grew ever fainter and soon
the shrieks of the seagulls drowned it out entirely.

Thursday, 24 December 2015

“So,” said
Topgod, taking a mouthful of ambrosia and washing it down with a glug of nectar,
“what hast thou discovered … mm, a very decent Nectar, this, where didst thou
get it?”

Deeply unfashionable though it was, Topgod preferred the old singular
form for the second person, to remove all doubt and later dispute about exactly
how many he had been talking to at the time.

“Elysian
Fields has just released it, apparently there’s a new Honeybee working there
now, with high Resistance to the Varroa Mite; strangely, they call it the Varry
Mitey Bee …”

“Their Sense
of Humour has always been a Bit of a Mystery.”

You could
actually hear the capital letters in Topgod’s speech, so finely cadenced was
it. He felt that capitals were absolutely necessary to distinguish (for
example) station the verb from Station the stopping place for trains … back
when there had been Trains, ah! what Fun that had been …

“But back to
Business, Youngster, what are thy Findings this Time? Thou hadst great Hopes
for Terra last Assessment; art thou satisfied with recent Progress? May I?” and
he topped up his glass.

Godlet Gamma
sighed. “I thought I’d sorted it out nicely when I gave them
Evolution: what could go wrong? Everything would adapt and survive or fail to
adapt and die out, and we’d have a Planet that ran smoothly because every
Creature fitted its Environment – no Worries.”

^It seemed
like a massively good Plan, yes. But thou soundst as if there was a Flaw. What
has happened?”

“Well, I assumed
that the Whale would turn out to be the dominant Creature, and in fact it did
well, there was plenty of Food in the Sea, it was reasonably peaceful, and its
Music was splendid – bewitching, even; but I worried about the Human: it seemed
terribly lacking in Strength compared to the Elephant or the Tiger or even our
good Friend the Rat, and its Rate of Evolution was so slow compared to the
Virus; I feared it would be wiped out.”

“But wasn’t
that the whole Point of Evolution? To get rid of unfit Creatures? What was
there to fear?”

“Well, thou
seest, even back at the Beginning the Human had this Sense of Humour, it made
Jokes about Everything, and that was so refreshing because almost Everything
else, especially the Virus, was so very serious; only the Rat made Jokes, and
they were just so anally basic, they hardly made me laugh at all. So I tried to
protect the Human, to give it at least a Chance.”

“Sure, help
thyself ... No, no, I had an Idea that I wanted to try out. I gave it three
Things – Three and Seven are usually lucky Numbers, aren’t they? – I gave it
the opposable Thumb so that it could hold Things and work on them and make new
Things out of them …”

“That isn’t
particularly new, it’s been done before and no great Harm resulted … yes, this
new Batch is much crisper, thou hast to tell me where thou didst get it.”

“As thou dost
say, done before, no Harm, safe enough. And then I made it walk upright so that
it could see farther and reach the high Fruit and leave the Hands free for
throwing Stones.”

“It still
hardly sounds too dangerous?”

“But thirdly
I gave it a relatively big Brain, I made it clever. And then it began to get
Ideas, Stuff I hadn’t thought of began to happen, Stuff I hadn’t intended …
Stuff it invented all by itself, out of its own Cleverness.”

“Thou art describing
an Unintended Consequence? Well we always get a Few of those. But after all,
thy Job is to foresee possible Consequences and avoid them happening
unintendedly. What was it that thou didst not foresee? After all, thou didst
steer clear of giving it Religion, did’nst thou … er, didst thou not?” There
were times when Topgod felt that old-second-person precision was hardly worth
the trouble.

“How could I
have foreseen that it would be so clever as to teach itself to speak? And there
came a Time when these human Animals discussed Problems and found Answers that
allowed them to survive. And at first I thought this was a huge Success, for
their Jokes became ever more sophisticated and multilingual, and I encouraged
them, saying “Go forth and multiply” and of course that was a Disaster, because
they have gone forth into Places that I never intended a Human to live, and
they have multiplied so as to take up all the available Space, and they have
killed off all Manner of harmless Beasts, such as the Dodo, which I loved
because it was harmless and helpless and a Joke in itself …” and Godlet Gamma
trailed off into heaving sobs.

Topgod
patted Gamma comfortingly, and for a little while both were silent, munching
the comforting crispness of the ambrosia.

Then, with a
great sigh, Godlet Gamma continued. “But the worst Thing of all was – thou
saidst I steered clear of Religion? Well, it’s true, I did. But what happened
was – thou wilt scarcely believe this – what happened was, the Humans invented
it for themselves!”

“No!” Topgod
could scarcely believe what he was hearing, and nearly spat out his current
swig of nectar. “That never happened anywhere else.”

“And because
the Humans had divided themselves into Tribes, distinguished by physical
Characteristics such as Colour, Shape of Eyes, Hairiness, and so on, each Tribe
invented its own Religion; and each Tribe pictured its God in its own Image,
and in its convoluted Way thought that its God had made the Human in its own
Image …”

“Ah yes,
back-to-front Reasoning – a quite common Failing in quasi-rational Creatures, a
good Thing there are only a Few of them. My, my, the Bottle’s nearly empty,
couldst thou …”

Godlet Gamma
disappeared to get a new Bottle. After a while he reappeared clutching a
magnificent Maxiflagon of Varry Mitey XXXX. Some time passed wrestling with the
cork, and then he went on with his tale of horror.

“… so each
Tribe had a God that looked different from all the other Tribes’ Gods, and this
gave rise to an Imperative: thou shalt destroy the Unbeliever …”

“And naturally,”
interrupted Topgod, “the Unbeliever was Everyone except one’s own Tribe. I see
how this Imperative would give rise to an awesome Amount of Warfare. But surely
it would also give rise to a significant Decrease in Population, thus doing at
least some Good?”

“Thou
wouldst think so, wouldn’tst thou, er, wouldst thou not? But what in fact
happened was that this continual Warfare and enormous Number of Deaths caused
the Human to concentrate on breeding more Humans, almost to the Exclusion of
any other Activity. Except possibly for making Music. And, thou knowst, its
Music is the best that has been produced anywhere … de-de-de-DUM, de-de-de-DUM
hic! hast thou heard that one, can’t get it out of my Head … far better than
anything the Whale did, course the Whale didn’t have the thingy Thumb, hic!”
Godlet Gamma seemed to be drifting into another realm of thought.

“Well now,
that is a veritable Train of Disaster (ahh! Trains! if only!) that thou tellst.
Didst thou not realise that such Micromanagement was never Part of thy Remit?
It would seem that thou hast done a baddish Job on Terra. I cannot be pleased
with thy Report. Although I have to say that thy Sourcing of Food and Drink is
excellent.”

“I know, I
know, it’s all gone Pear-shaped and is likely to get worse if I don’t intervene
… I was thinking that what I could do …”

“Stop right
there. Thou hast intervened already and look at the Outcome - a Disaster. The last Thing thou shouldst do
is intervene again. Terra must now be left to itself: whether it survives or
not is out of thy Hands. I now pass Terra and its Outcome to Fate. I have
spoken.”

“Thou knowst
it was my very first Assignment and meant a Lot to me …”

“That was
the Trouble, thou wast too caught up and thou didst interfere overmuch. Best to
stand back and let Things take their Course at the Dictate of Evolution; we
have seen how wonderfully well it works.”

Godlet Gamma
shrugged its shoulders like one relieved of a heavy burden. “I hear hic! and I
obey” it slurred, “and now shall I show thee where I found this crispy Ambrosia,
and hic! the Meadow where the Varry Mitey Bee …”

Spreading
their great wings, off into the distance they flowed, relieved of the boredom
of Assessment, getting on with the things dear to their hearts. Fainter and
fainter came Godlet Gamma’s creaky tenor: de-de-de-DUM,
de-de-de-DUM, hic!